"The Perfect Holiday" may be far from perfect, but the big question is why you're sitting in a movie theater watching it instead of cuddling up at home with the remote in one hand and a steaming toddy in the other.

There's only one reason the cliche-ridden holiday film is in movie theaters and not on, say, the ABC Family Channel or Lifetime: Queen Latifah. The entertainment world's super multitasker may only have a few cameo frames in the film, but she's one of the producers, and when the Queen says it's going to theaters, it's going to theaters, regardless of the fact that it's only marginally better than whatever that Family Channel movie was this week with Mario Lopez and Melissa Joan Hart.

Truth to tell, "Perfect Holiday" is likely to be remembered as the other African American holiday film of 2007, the also-ran to "This Christmas," which not only hit theaters first, but was also relatively well reviewed by critics and well received by audiences.

Directed by Lance Rivera, from a script crafted by Marc Calixte, Nan Mauldin, Jeff Stein and Rivera, "Holiday" is the story of a would-be songwriter named Ben Armstrong (Morris Chestnut) who takes a part-time job as a department-store Santa, where a little girl named Emily (Khail Bryant) tells him that all she wants for Christmas is for someone to compliment her mother, Nancy (Gabrielle Union). Emily's overheard Mom say she'd like a man to tell her she's beautiful and then walk away. Ben gets a gander at Nancy and decides to make Emily's wish come true by following her into the dry cleaner's.

Believe it or not, this isn't where Ben and Nancy meet cute. That comes a few minutes later, and it happens in a candy store. A few minutes after that, they're dating. A few more minutes, they're in love. Meanwhile - and make no mistake, in a movie as dependent on a busy plot to hide its lack of originality as this one, there are plenty of "meanwhiles" - Ben decides he can't tell Nancy he's a songwriter, so he pretends to be an office supply salesman.

Well, of course he does.

Meanwhile Part Deux: One of his songs is hoovered up by Nancy's sleazy ex, a big rap star named J-Jizzy (Charlie Murphy) who's also battling to win custody of his kids for the holidays so he can feature them in a TV show. Meanwhile Part Trois: Nancy's older boy, John-John (Malik Hammond), doesn't like Ben because he still hopes his parents will get back together and that blinds him to his dad's shortcomings. So Ben's got to keep Jizzy from knowing that he's dating his ex-wife, he has to keep Nancy from knowing that he's not only a songwriter but also has sold a song to her ex-husband, and he has to win John-John over so he can marry Nancy. There are a million other "meanwhiles" along the way, virtually all of which could be easily explained if Ben acted like any kind of reasonable human being.

Of course, they all live gooily ever after - you knew that before the animated opening credits have stopped rolling because the movie isn't called "The Perfect Holiday" for nothing. Christmas-themed movies, more often than not, all seem the same because so many of the basic plot and character elements are recycled from one to the next. No matter how stale the material, however, we often respond on cue anyway because these cliches are pretty Grinch-proof.

Despite the flabby direction and uninspired plot, "The Perfect Holiday" almost works because Chestnut and Union are an attractive couple and you want them to get together. Besides, come on, it's Christmas: We all want to feel good at this time of the year, no matter how little Hollywood does to earn that feeling.

The rest of the cast is pretty good as well, especially young Hammond as the grumpy eldest of Nancy's kids, and Faizon Love as Ben's plus-size buddy and Santa's biggest elf.

Queen Latifah has a kind of recurring cameo role as a quasi-narrator and magicmaker. She shows up in various guises - as a hot dog vender, homeless woman, security guard - to nudge the inevitabilities of the story line along. Contributing even less, and for reasons that make no sense at all, is Terrence Howard, who plays the anti-holiday Bah Humbug and has all of about six words of dialogue in the entire film. At one point, he dresses up as a giant mouse. Maybe if he'd kept the headpiece on, no one would have recognized him and he could have gotten out of this imperfect film with his reputation intact.

Will you get a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye at the end? Of course you will. It's all about Christmas, and even the meager presents work their wonders.